I am not sure if it’s just coincidence or if there’s something behind it, but the word ‘Orthorexia’ has been showing up in different forms in different articles lately in the online media. So, what is orthorexia? The word ‘Orthorexia’ is derived from two Greek words ‘ορθο’ (ortho meaning ‘correct’ or ‘right’) and ‘όρεξις’ (orexis meaning ‘appetite’). So it means something like ‘right-appetite’ or ‘correct diet’. Basically it seems orthorexia is an eating disorder where the sufferers avoid food with chemicals and pesticides and preservatives and eat only healthy food; they watch what they are eating. There is an innate desire in many of us to do things the right way. Whether it is doing our jobs, or dealing with relationships or writing a computer program or taking pictures or writing a blog or just about anything basic including keeping the house clean, wearing clean clothes, drinking clean water, breathing clean air, and…yes...eating the right food. Why is eating the right food suddenly a ‘mental disorder’?
The word itself is not a new word; it was formed in 1997 but has been given new life recently by the media. There was a time when people cared in great detail for the food they ate. They picked the right food items that would supply them with the nutrition that their bodies needed and prepared them with the right kind of ingredients to make the dishes tasty, natural and healthy. This was obvious and part of their lives, and part of their general knowledge. If you ask some ‘old timers’, especially from cultures that have not modernized very much they would go in detail about how certain food items may cause certain reactions and how certain food items can help deal with certain conditions in the body, etc.
As societies modernized and things became more and more complicated, there were other things that people increasingly started focusing on, including entertainment. People suddenly felt that preparing food, and understanding food is an onerous chore and that is when the processed food industry was born. It was so convenient to buy food from the shelves and eat it without doing anything to it, or at the minimum heat it up. Gradually people became less and less knowledgeable about food, and the various nutrients contained in various food items and food became something that is tasty, filling and easy to get and something that is eaten so that they don’t feel hungry to do the real things like entertaining themselves or focusing on work. How often have we heard things like “The game is about to start in 30 mins, I’m just gonna order pizza”, or “I have an important report that I need to finish, I’m just going to get a sandwich”.
The greatest problem to this is not the obvious health problems and decline in general health among the public but it is the decrease in general knowledge about food. If this trend continues, people may not even know what goodness is in tomatoes and how fish is good for us and what is the importance of eating raw vegetables. All they would care for is keeping their bellies filled with the tastiest food gotten the easiest way possible and repeating after whatever information the processed food industry keep feeding them; almost like the “The plants need electrolytes” scene from the movie “Idiocracy”.
The good thing is there has been an increase in awareness among the public and even a desire to know more about food, and consumption of more fresh and organic food items. People are increasingly starting to avoid processed food, and food that is devoid of nutrients and colored and flavored with numerous chemicals and kept preserved with preservatives. This is certainly not good news for the processed food industry. So why not call a return to ‘normality’ as something ‘abnormal’, a ‘mental disorder’? It may not suddenly “enlighten” people and cause them to return to processed food, but atleast it may slow down the trend, or make some ‘new converts’ or ‘undecided’ people think and wonder, if that is really a weird disorder. Even if it can give the processed food consumers some new point to debate against their own well-being, that itself is a huge help for the processed food industry. That I believe is the reason behind the “discovery” of this new “mental disorder”. Hopefully there are enough people who can think rationally and are knowledgeable and wise enough to decide what is good for them instead of buying theories from these “experts”.
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